Daron Sutton has been the Diamondbacks’ television play-by-play announcer since 2007, but last week he was removed from the team’s broadcasts without explanation.

Senior vice president of communications Josh Rawitch said only that “we’ve made a change in the broadcast-talent lineup” and “Daron will be taking some time off.”

Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic finds the whole situation very odd, writing: “You can’t remove a play-by-play guy out of the broadcast booth during the middle of the season without explanation, from a team with great television ratings, at a time when the Diamondbacks are finally finding a groove, and expect muted compliance from the masses.”

And yet the Diamondbacks have done just that, with managing general partner Ken Kendrick declining to comment yesterday except to say it was “a personnel matter” and “I suspect the situation will become clear soon enough.”

Adding to the drama is that Sutton is scheduled to work the FOX national game Saturday, which is Diamondbacks versus Brewers.

I’m pretty sure he hot into hot water for criticizing Kendrick and his comments about Upton and Drew. I’m not a Diamondbacks fan, but I love the duo of Sutton and Grace and I really hope cooler heads prevail.

Grace is horrible, it isn’t that I refuse to listen to him, I simply can’t do it. I can make it through an inning max, and then I’ll have to switch broadcasts or mute it. I can only handle so many untrue facts during a broadcast.

At our house (1 male, 1 female), we have loved the combination of Sutton/Grace for years. Together, they are great company, and we consider them to be welcome guests in our house almost daily throughout baseball season. We are very surprised to learn how many people can’t stand Daron Sutton, but we have missed him during recent games, and will continue to do so. We think Greg Schulte is numbingly boring – totally flat personality and so fixated on statistics that our eyes glaze over. We realize that many baseball fans love statistics, many don’t like Grace, so many will be pleased with the change, but we aren’t among them. Whatever the problem is, someone had better explain to us fans, because shoving Schulte in without explanation is not OK.

I can only hope and pray that my Padres remove BOTH Dick Enberg & Mark Grant. These guys are the absolute WORST duo involved in calling games. Enberg can’t remember player names or pitch counts throughout games and Grant is just a giant clownshoe who brings nothing to the table unless you want to know what the next pitch called will be.

I agree with you about Enberg and Grant, their radio broadcasters are worse, Ted Leitner is so bad you can’t listen, have to listen to Spanish Broadcast and I don’t even speak spanish. They’ll all get dumped when team sells. On Sutton, you have to remember this is Arizona and nothing makes sence here. Worse yet I’m a Padre fan stuck in AZ, thanks for Cox broacasts of Padre games.